Aurora Sartori

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Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Chapters

• Rubinstein-Avila, E., & Sartori, A. (2015).

  Diversification and Nuanced Inequities in Digital Media Use in the United States

  . In Handbook of Research on the Societal Impact of Digital Media(pp 560-580). IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978-1-4666-8310-5.ch022
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  This chapter explores access to, and engagement with, digital media by United States' (U.S.) by nonmainstream populations. Framing the issue from a sociotechnical standpoint, the authors explore how engagement with digital media is shaped by socioeconomic status (taking into account confounding factors, such as race and ethnicity, and social and geographical ecologies). The authors highlight studies that focus on the robust digital practices with which nonmainstream populations already engage, and to which they contribute. One example is how some black Twitter users engage in signifyin'–a culturally specific linguistic practice—as a means of performing racial identity online. The authors also problematize concepts such as the new digital divide and digital exclusion, and finally, reiterate that a universal roll-out of high speed broadband alone will not necessarily lead to further engagement with digital media for ALL populations. In fact, the authors claim that providing more or faster access is likely not enough to prevent the entrenchment of a global digital underclass.

Journals/Publications

• Sartori, A. C. (2023). Mapping choice: A critical GIS analysis of English learner enrollment. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 31. doi:10.14507/epaa.31.7253
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  In many ways, Arizona is on the forefront of school choice: in addition to a state-wide open enrollment law, it was one of the first states to adopt charter school legislation in 1994 and currently has the second-highest percentage of public school students attending charter schools in the nation. Despite the extensive research on school choice, less is known about whether choice systems meaningfully impart more opportunities for students classified as English learners, a diverse group that has been the subject of multiple discriminatory policies and has one of the lowest graduation rates in the state. The current paper uses geospatial analysis to examine English learner participation in school choice in one Arizona metropolitan area. The results indicate that charter schools consistently under-enroll EL students regardless of demographic variability across geographic locations. Charter school locational patterns may be one contributing factor to EL enrollment disparities, though they are not likely to be the only reason. Employing a conceptual framework of motility or “mobility capital” (Kaufman et al., 2004) and a critical stance on the spatial dimensions of neoliberal reforms, findings suggest that unregulated school choice may not reliably provide improved schooling options for students classified as English learners.
• Sartori, A. (2018).

  Whiteness in Development: A Critical Content Analysis of Peace Corps Marketing

  . Understanding and Dismantling Privilege, 8(2), 19-27.
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  International volunteering has recently become a popular option for young people who have graduated from college and are seeking career opportunities, professional development, a sense of purpose, and adventure. This Critical Content Analysis (CCA) of a popular Peace Corps marketing campaign looks beyond the rhetoric of adventure, challenging dominant discourses on international volunteering and considering how this phenomenon might be contextualized within starkly racialized colonial histories and global systems of White dominance. Using Critical Whiteness Studies and Shannon Sullivan’s (2006) notion of ontological expansiveness as a theoretical framework, this study explores how ideologies of Whiteness may inform perceptions of the Global South as they productively shape White people’s desires to volunteer there. Primary findings of the analysis include that marketing materials tend to abstract the work of volunteering, that the Global South is singularly represented as a timeless rural space, and that volunteering is depicted as an individualistic journey of discovery. This research sheds light on how systems of global inequality are discursively maintained, and points towards the need to reframe how relationships across cultural, racial, and geographic lines are represented.

Presentations

• Sartori, A. (2024). Mapping belonging: Integrating ways of spatial knowing with Qualitative GIS. XVIII World Congress of Comparative Education Societies. Ithaca, NY.